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Scott Anderson, a professor of environmental and quaternary science in the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability at Northern Arizona University, was part of a team that countered a prevailing idea that a major impact event 13,000 years ago was the cause of rapid climate change and the last mass extinction on the planet.

The year 2010 finished in a photo finish with 1998 for the warmest year in the 32-year satellite temperature record. 2010 was only 0.013 C cooler than 1998, an amount that is not statistically significant.

A new study finds that microscopic particles of dust, emitted into the atmosphere when dirt breaks apart, follow similar fragment patterns as broken glass and other brittle objects. The research suggests there are several times more dust particles in the atmosphere than previously believed, since shattered dirt appears to produce an unexpectedly high number of large dust fragments. The finding has implications for understanding future climate change because dust plays a significant role in controlling the amount of solar energy in the atmosphere.

Scientists expect the Arctic Ocean to be ice-free in summer by century's end. Now a trio of researchers say losing this continent-sized natural barrier between species such as bears, whales and seals, could mean extinction of some rare marine mammals and the loss of many adaptive gene combinations.

A team of scientists studying Antarctic ice cores have found surprising evidence of a fluctuating pattern of carbon monoxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere caused by biomass burning in the Southern Hemisphere over the past 650 years.

When it comes to controlling carbon emissions, a Case Western Reserve University political scientist challenges conventional views that countries are the only rule makers in international politics of climate change. Jessica Green from the College of Arts and Sciences reports that today's gold standard for measuring the carbon footprint of firms and organizations was created by the collaborative efforts of NGOs and the private sector--not by countries forging the Kyoto Protocol.

How warm has 2010 been? So warm that although October was the coolest month so far this year year (compared to seasonal norms), it tied October 2006 as the second warmest October in the 32-year satellite climate record.

As the ice-capped Arctic Ocean warms, ship traffic will increase at the top of the world. And if the sea ice continues to decline, a new route connecting international trading partners may emerge -- but not without significant repercussions to climate, according to a U.S. and Canadian research team that includes a University of Delaware scientist.

The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought. The analysis concludes that warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years, possibly reaching a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times.

Some middle school students will get a unique perspective on research conducted more than 9,000 miles away by a team that includes a veteran of Antarctic expeditions. A five-member team from North Dakota State University's Department of Geosciences heads to Antarctica this October to conduct research on Antarctica's climate history. The team, whose research is funded by the National Science Foundation, includes Allan Ashworth, distinguished professor of geosciences; Adam Lewis, assistant professor of geosciences; geology undergraduate students Michael Ginsbach and Chad Crotty, and Alex Smith, graduate student in environmental and conservation sciences.

Hopes that coral reefs might be able to survive, and recover from, bleaching caused by climate change may have grown dimmer for certain coral species, according to new research by University at Buffalo marine biologists published this week in PLoS One.

A Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) study on nesting birds in Argentina finds that increasing temperatures and rainfall--both side effects of climate change in some parts of the world--could be bad for birds of South America, but great for some of their parasites which thrive in warmer and wetter conditions.

Researchers at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pa., are working to isolate the bacterial pathogen Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterial pathogen causing the early demise of some campus oak trees. They will then study how climate change affects the progression of the disease it causes, which is known as leaf scorch.

Climate change has been a serious concern for military leaders long before reports and headlines focused on the topic over the past few years. An informative look at how the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is assessing the consequences from climate change is highlighted in the Spring 2010 issue of Imaging Notes magazine.

A study suggests for the first time that the allergen-producing fungus, Alternaria alternata, produces three times more irritating spores when it feeds on plants grown in a carbon-dioxide-rich environment such as is predicted to exist on Earth in 15 to 25 years, as climate is disrupted and temperatures rise.

In response to growing concerns about our planet's changing climate, rising global temperatures and sea levels, and increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), scientists are looking to the planet's past to help predict its future. New results from a research expedition in Antarctic waters may provide critical clues to understanding one of the most dramatic periods of climatic change in Earth's history - and a glimpse into what might lie far ahead in our climate's future.

Powered by the most intense El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event since 1997-1998, the first three months of 2010 have all landed among the six warmest months in the satellite temperature record, which starts in December 1978.

The El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event continues to dominate the global temperature keeping it quite warm, although not so in selected locations where many in the U.S. and Europe experienced colder than usual conditions through February.

University of Arkansas researchers examined records of 65,987 daily mean temperature observations to reconstruct climate data in Manhattan, Kan., for the past 180 years and have found that 19th century temperatures were significantly cooler than in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded $2.4 million to the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop a new type of radar system that will be used to study the Earth's ice and snow formations from the air.

In his recent book, Strategic Bargaining and Cooperation in Greenhouse Gas Mitigations, Binghamton University's Zili Yang suggests ways governments might realistically work together to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He also makes a case for curbing the use of fossil fuels -- whether they contribute to climate change or not.

Theories about the rates of ice accumulation and melting during the Quaternary Period -- the time interval ranging from 2.6 million years ago to the present -- may need to be revised, thanks to research findings published by a University of Iowa researcher and his colleagues in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

The University of New Hampshire and the State of New Hampshire have partnered to create the Green Launching Pad, an initiative that will bring new green technologies to the marketplace, help innovative clean technology companies succeed, and support the creation of "green" economy jobs in New Hampshire.

The increasing acidity of the world's oceans - and that acidity's growing threat to marine species - are definitive proof that the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is causing climate change is also negatively affecting the marine environment, says world-renowned Antarctic marine biologist Jim McClintock, Ph.D., professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Biology.

Painting the roofs of buildings white has the potential to significantly cool cities and mitigate some impacts of global warming, a new study indicates. The research, which is the first computer modeling study to simulate the impacts of white roofs on urban areas worldwide, suggests there may be merit to an idea advanced by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and other policymakers that white roofs can be an important tool to help society adjust to climate change.

A study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides new information about the rates at which three of the most powerful greenhouse gases are destroyed by a chemical reaction that takes place in the upper atmosphere.

In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.

Measures being proposed by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership to curb greenhouse gas emissions are unlikely to affect potential long-term economic growth in the United States, according to a study by RTI International.

The strong signature of an El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event showed up as the warmest November in 30 years -- and not just by a little bit. November 2009 was a full 0.1 C (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than November 2005, the second warmest November in the 31-year satellite record.

The ocean plays a critical role in Earth's climate system and will be among the topics discussed during the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) taking place in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18, 2009.
This year -- for the first time -- the climate meeting will feature an Oceans Day on December 14. Experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are available for comment.

"I don't see any chance that we can have enforceable national limits on greenhouse gas emissions," says University of Maryland Nobel laureate, Thomas Schelling in a paper released as delegates meet in Copenhagen at a UN climate conference. "I know of no peacetime historical precedent for the kind of international cooperation that is going to be required."

South Dakota State University researchers and their colleagues elsewhere in the U.S. and France found compelling evidence of a previously undocumented volcanic eruption that contributed to extremely cold decade from 1810-1819.

Leaders of the world's nations will meet Dec. 7-16 in Copenhagen, Denmark, for talks as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Indiana University experts comment on their prospects.

Ithaca College will be represented by students, faculty, and alumni at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15), being held Dec. 5-18 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Neal Iverson has created a glacier in a freezer that could help scientists understand how glaciers slide across their beds. That could help researchers predict how climate change accelerates glacier sliding and contributes to rising sea levels.

Deep under the sea, a fossil the size of a sand grain is nestled among a billion of its closest dead relatives. Known as foraminifera, these complex little shells of calcium carbonate can tell you the sea level, temperature, and ocean conditions of Earth millions of years ago. That is, if you know what to look for.

Most land-use changes occurring in the continental United States reduce vegetative cover and raise regional surface temperatures, says a new study by scientists at the University of Maryland, Purdue University, and the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The University of Delaware will host a conference on "The Ethics of Climate Change: Intergenerational Justice and the Global Challenge" Friday and Saturday, Oct. 30-31, at the Clayton Hall Conference Center on the University's Newark campus.

The anticipated sea-level rise associated with climate change, including increased storminess, over the next 100 years and the impact on the nation's low-lying coastal infrastructure is the focus of a new, interdisciplinary study led by geologists at The Florida State University.

The University of Delaware, in collaboration with Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, Pa., has won a $4.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the Christina River Basin as a "Critical Zone Observatory" for researching questions relating to climate change. The scientists will be working to determine how, and how rapidly, soil erosion and sediment transport through rivers impact the exchange of carbon between the land and the atmosphere, and affect climate.

For nearly four decades, a University of Maryland professor has traveled to Colorado each spring to study in fields of purple dwarf larkspurs and vibrant red columbines. He's watched through the summers as these pretty little wildflowers grew and blossomed. And what he's learned about their changing growing seasons is telling us something important about the Earth's climate.

The tropics continued to respond in August to warming caused by the El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event, with the average temperature in the tropics warming. At the same time, non-tropical temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere plunged in August.

Tornadoes that occur from hurricanes moving inland from the Gulf Coast are increasing in frequency, according to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This increase seems to reflect the increase in size and frequency among large hurricanes that make landfall from the Gulf of Mexico.

Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years. New research in the journal Science provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns.

A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.

Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

Particulate pollution thought to be holding climate change in check by reflecting sunlight instead enhances warming when combined with airborne soot, a new study by researchers at the UC San Diego has found.

Climate change is altering North American winter bird communities in ways that models currently favored by ecologists fail to predict. Based on patterns of animals found in different climate zones today, ecologists would expect that as habitats warm, numbers of species found there will increase, and that those species will be smaller in size and restricted to narrower geographic ranges. Ecologists at the University of California, San Diego have found that only one of those three predictions has held for North American birds over the past quarter century.

The global composite temperature during June 2009 was flat, according to figures from The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Northern Hemisphere experienced a slight increase "" +0.03 C (about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit) above 20-year average for June. Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere was cooler by the same amount "" -0.03 C (about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit) below 20-year average for June.

Banning or restricting the use of certain types of fishing gear could help the world's coral reefs and their fish populations survive the onslaughts of climate change according to a study by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups.

"This report is a very thorough, sobering synthesis of what we now know about the impacts of climate change on all of us," says Nancy Grimm, a professor at Arizona State University, one of the authors on the new federal study assessing the current and anticipated domestic impacts of climate change.

Policy makers and environmental, planning, and engineering experts from around the world convene to compare and assess the mitigation and adaptation policies of three major world coastal cities, each with a Dutch heritage: Rotterdam, Jakarta, and New York City. Venue: Stony Brook Manhattan, Park Ave, New York City.

Researchers at the University of Delaware have discovered a new reason why the tall, tasseled reed Phragmites australis is one of the most invasive plants in the United States. The UD research team found that Phragmites delivers a one-two chemical knock-out punch to snuff out its victims, and the poison becomes even more toxic in the presence of the sun's ultraviolet rays.

An international research team returned recently from a drilling trip in Siberia, where they retrieved Arctic cores going back further than ever before collected, information they call "of absolutely unprecedented significance" for understanding past climate change and modeling future developments.

A melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and in Canada, according to new research led by NCAR.

Some Michigan mammal species are rapidly expanding their ranges northward, apparently in response to climate change, a new study shows. In the process, these historically southern species are replacing their northern counterparts.

Earth's earliest ice age may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth. University of Maryland geologist Alan J. Kaufman and an international team of scientists uncovered evidence that the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere coincided with the first global ice age.

The Wildlife Conservation Society announced today a study showing that some coral reefs off East Africa are unusually resilient to climate change due to improved fisheries management and a combination of geophysical factors.

A large and diverse array of sportsmen and sportswomen is blitzing Capitol Hill this week to advocate for fish and wildlife as the House of Representatives initiates historic hearings on comprehensive climate change legislation.

Rivers in some of the world's most populous regions are losing water, according to a new study led by NCAR scientists. The reduced flows in many cases are associated with climate change, and may potentially threaten future supplies of food and water.

Chicago and other cities have adopted green initiatives designed to foster more investment in local and regional agriculture. City officials and citizens alike often assume that by doing so they can help soften climate change by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. But it's not that simple.

Top international climate scientists are meeting this week at the University of Maryland laying the groundwork for improved regionalized climate change forecasts and for the advanced computing models needed to make these projections, says chair and host, Antonio Busalacchi. It's the first time in a decade that a U.S. scientist has led the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme.

Fueled by the slogan "Turn your lights off, turn the Earth on!" Misericordia University's new environmentally-focused student group, Cougars for Change, is leading campus efforts to participate in a world-wide initiative to draw attention to responsible energy use and global warming.

Large areas of much warmer than normal temperatures over Western Greenland,
China and the Northern Pacific Ocean pushed the Northern Hemisphere's average temperature in February to the fifth highest level seen in the 30+ year satellite-based temperature record.

A University of Maryland-led team has compiled the first decades-long database of aerosol measurements over land, making possible new research into how air pollution changes affect climate change. The researchers show that clear sky visibility over land has decreased globally, indicative of increases in aerosols, or airborne pollution. Their findings are published in the March 13 issue of Science.

Effects of climate change projected this century for Oregon's Upper Willamette River Basin, including Eugene-Springfield, will threaten water supplies, buildings, transportation systems, human health, forests, and fish and wildlife, according to a new report.